M.A. History Lamar University 1990
Thesis: “The Desegregation of Lamar State College of Technology: An Analysis of Race and Education in Southeast Texas.” Committee: John Carroll, Adrian Anderson, and Ralph Wooster

1997-2005 The University of Alabama: Associate Professor of American Studies and Director of the African American Studies Program (Assistant Professor, 1997-2003)

1992-1997 University of Houston: Research Associate, Office of the Vice Provost for Academic Programs & Faculty Affairs & Postdoctoral Fellow in History (1996-1997); Lecturer, African American Studies Program and Department of History

2000 Carl Elliott Society Significant Commitment to Public Service Award

1999 Autherine Lucy Foster Award for Significant Contribution to the Community

1998 Phi Beta Delta Honor Society for International Scholars Inductee

While at the University of Houston

1996-97 Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Higher Education

1994-96 Conoco Dissertation Fellow in History (Downtown campus)

1991-95 Miller Dissertation Research Grants and Del Barto Scholarship

1991-93 Cullen Graduate Scholarship

1991-92 Stella Ehrhardt Memorial Fellowship

While at Lamar University

1990 Outstanding Member of the Graduating Class

1990 Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges

1990 Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society for History, Mu Chi Chapter

1990 Academic Achievement Award, Black Student Association

1989 Blue Key National Honor Fraternity

1989 Academic Achievement Award, Black Student Association

While at Pratt Institute

Student Government Association Outstanding Contributions Award

While at the University of Texas at Austin

1980 Omicron Delta Epsilon Honor Society for Economics Majors

1980 Christopher Marshall Memorial Scholarship, Economics Department

1978 Alpha Lambda Delta, Freshmen Honor Society (Dean’s List)

1977 Thomas Lee Memorial Scholarship, Knights of Saint Peter Claver

Research and Publications

Books & Monographs

Women and Others: Perspectives on Gender, Race, and Empire. Co-editor with Celia R. Daileader and Rhoda Johnson Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas. University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

The Forty Acres Documents: What Did the United States Really Promise the People Freed from Slavery? The Malcolm Generation, 1994.

The Desegregation of Higher Education in Texas: A Statistical Summary and Research Report. Institute for African American Policy Research, University of Houston. 1992.

Refereed Articles & Book Chapters

“The Shoulders We Stand On: Black Professionals & the Transformation of U.S. Society” introduction to A Quest for Justice: Louis A. Bedford Jr.and the Struggle for Equal Rights in Texas by Darwin Payne. Southern Methodist University Press (2009).

“Carter Wesley & the Making of Houston’s Civic Culture before the Second Reconstruction.” The Houston Review vol. 1, no. 2 (2004): 8-13, 49-50.

Statement on the International Year of People of African Descent and the Historic Demand for Reparations.” The Journal of African American History, co-authored with Akinyele Umoja, vol 96, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 440-41. Appears at this link.

“Contributions in Black Studies: a Journal of African and Afro-American Studies (CIBS) is a free full-text academic journal, we placed online. The CIBS journal ran from 1977 to 1997, and all issues are now online for free…This will be a useful resource for those working in Black Studies, and especially for those seeking to track the changing ideas within this field over several decades. The website also has a short history of the journal and its editors.” –From Intute: http://www.intute.ac.uk/cgi-bin/fullrecord.pl?handle=20090313-16162768

2009 Narrator of poems “Gotham City” and “An International Rage,” in For Victims and Survivors of September 11, a composition by Frederick C. Tillis, performed at the Jazz Ensemble I Concert, Jeffrey W. Holmes, director, November 23, 2009, UMass Amherst.

“Mapping the 3rd Ward in Houston: Story Work in the Face of Redevelopment,” a collaboration with Carroll Parrott Blue’s The Dawn Project, the University of Houston’s College of Education, and the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) of Berkeley, CA. A 9-12 December 2006 workshop led to the creation of a StoryMap for the 3rd Ward of Houston, Texas (www.storycenter.org/placemeant.html). By placing short memoirs that combine creative writing, the family album, digital audio and video editing on an online map it integrates Digital Storytelling with mapping technologies (Geo-tagged images on Flickr, story-based GoogleMaps, Windows Live virtual tours, and walking tours via local cell phone, Bluetooth, and other imbedded wireless stories). My StoryMap, “Luddington’s Café,” is online at http://www.storycenter.org/thirdward.html. Uploaded 2007.

“My Grandmother is a Warrior”: The Story of Versie Lee Jackson and the Integration of Lamar University in Texas” (2007), produced by UTOPIA of the University of Texas Libraries. As a volunteer historical consultant to and talking head in this 20-minute documentary, I worked with content librarians, graphic designers, Web site builders, writers, programmers, information architects, videographers and more to break down the physical boundaries between the University and the world. Online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2Fcv9d8yEA

1999 Community Arts 2000: A Vision from the Black Belt. $10,000 from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. ASCA Grant # FY99-0744. Project Director.

1999 An Institute on Culturally Responsive Teaching Practice (one of five set up across the U.S.). $10,000 mini-grant from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and MetLife. Co‑Principal Investigator with Jerry Rosiek.

1997 Redefining Place. A $1,000 grant from the Tuscaloosa Consortium for Higher Education. Project Co‑Director with Robert Heath of Stillman College.

1995 Building the New Texas/Understanding Other Nations. Texas Committee for the Humanities Major Grant. TCH Grant # FY95-2334. Project Co-Director.

Participant, “Are You On Fire?: A Hands-On Workshop for Preparing Submissions to Fire!!! The Multimedia Journal of Black Studies,” and Presenter, “New Digitizing Projects for Black History and Scholarship,” Association for the Study of African-American Life & History 97th annual meeting, Pittsburgh, PA.

Plenary presenter, “Africana Studies in the Americas from Estudios Afrocubanos to Estudios Afrodiasporicos,” The International Colloquium of the 32nd Annual Festival del Caribe in Santiago de Cuba.

Invited Guest Speaker, “Education for Life: The Du Bois Doctorate of African American Studies and Its First Forty Years of Unity and Struggle,” at Northwestern University’s A Beautiful Struggle: Transformative Black Studies in Shifting Political Landscapes–A Summit of Doctoral Programs in Evanston, IL. Part of news stories on the conference in Diverse Issues in Higher Education (July 5, 2012), The Daily Northwestern (April 13, 2012), and The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 12, 2012).

Presenter, “Developments in the Digital Humanities, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the History of Afro-Latin American Studies,” at The 3rd Annual Negritud Conference at the Center of Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico & the Caribbean, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Attended board meetings of the NCBS and chaired two panel sessions at its annual meeting, in Atlanta, GA.

Organizer/presenter, at the National Council for Black Studies 34th annual meeting, New Orleans, LA: Discussant, “Black Studies in the Americas beyond the U.S.: A Roundtable on Epistemological and Political Challenges;” Presenter, “Black Power in Newsprint: Radical and Mainstream;” in Emerging Research on the Black Press and Black Power session.

Organizer/presenter, at the National Council for Black Studies 33rd annual meeting, Atlanta, GA. Chair, created Session, “Look Back and Wonder: The Genesis of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst;” Chair, created Session: “Transdisciplinary Directions in Africana Studies: A Multi-departmental Cluster Hire and Mutual Mentoring Program in Year One;” and Presenter, “No Deed but Memory: Using Library e-Repositories to Promote and Disseminate Black/Africana Studies Knowledge,” in DigitalTools in Black Studies Research session.

Organizer/presenter/chair, at the 93rd Annual Convention of the Association for the Study of African American Life & History, Sheraton Birmingham, AL: Chair, “Black Student Activism and Efficacy: Past and Present” session; Chair, created Session, “African American Life and History in Museums, Archives, and Historic Places in Alabama;” Chair, created Session, “Look Back and Wonder: The Genesis of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst;” and Presenter, “The Promise and Pitfalls of e-Publishing for Afro American Studies” in No Deed but Memory: Using Library e-Repositories to Promote & Disseminate Knowledge of African American Life session.

Presenter, “When the public in Greensboro, Alabama, determines its own interests: Lessons from a collaboration between social justice academics and grassroots community-based projects in the Southern Black Belt,” a special session of the American Educational Research Association annual conference and The Edge of Each Other’s Battles Project, San Francisco, CA.

Presenter, “Reparations across the Americas,” 8th Annual IAAR/International Scholars Conference of the Institute for African American Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC. www.unc.edu/depts/iaar/ISC/isc2006.htm

“When Power Concedes Nothing: The Texas University Movement.” African American History in Texas Conference: On the Civil Rights Movement in the Lone Star State, The Dallas African American Museum, Dallas, TX.

Discussant, “Recording the Culture of a Black Community.” Southern Conference on African American Studies, Inc., San Antonio, TX.

Presenter, “Loving a Hated Aesthetic: The Walter Evans Collection of African American Art.” The Gibbes Museum of Art & College of Charleston Symposium on African American Arts: Preserving a Cultural Legacy, Charleston, SC.

Presenter, “Plowing Around Desegregation to Get on with Maintaining White Supremacy: Texas Universities and the Evasion of Equity after Brown.” East Texas Historical Association, Nacogdoches, TX.

Presenter, “Black Panther Kuwasi Balogun’s Journey to Anarchism and Guerrilla Warfare: An Exploration of International Influences to the U.S. from Spain & Cuba.” Southwest Council of Latin American Studies, Havana, Cuba.

Presenter, “Globalizing the Struggle: Towards an Understanding of African-American Social Movement Organizations & International Linkages” (with C. Davenport). National Conference of Black Political Scientists, Chicago, IL.

Commentator, “Creating New Paradigms in the Black Experience.” Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, Charleston, SC.

Presenter, “College Desegregation in South Texas: ‘We Never Had Any Problems.’” Southwestern Social Science Association, Houston, TX.

Presenter, “Inclusivity & Exclusivity in Public Representation: A Colored View of the Museum of Fine Arts.” South Central Modern Language Association, Houston, TX.

Presenter and Panel Coordinator, “The How’s and Why’s of Going to Graduate School.” Great Plains Honors Council, College Station, TX.

“Islam Matters: Social Crisis and Religious Change in the U.S.” and “The Black Muslims: Cultural Persistence in the Belly of the Beast.” Interdisciplinary Humanities 1994 Spring Symposium, University of Southwestern Louisiana, Lafayette, LA.

Public lectures and book signings on the pre-release of Advancing Democracy at Odom Academy and Nu World of Books, Beaumont, TX.

Introduced/organized the visit of Christian Davenport of the University of Maryland to the University of Alabama as the Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Lecturer & John Henrik Clark Visiting Scholar, Tuscaloosa, AL. See MLK Lecture Series.

Masters of Ceremony, 3rd anniversary celebration of the Safehouse Museum.

Dr. Amilcar Shabazz is professor and chair of the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was born in Beaumont, Texas, and after he graduated from Monsignor Kelly High School he went on to receive his bachelor’s degree in economics from The University of Texas at Austin, his masters from Lamar University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Houston, both in history. He was an associate professor of History and Director of the American Studies Program at Oklahoma State University, as well as the founding director of the Center for Africana Studies & Development. Prior to that he served as the first director of the African American Studies Program at The University of Alabama while also a tenured professor of American Studies.

His book Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas (University of North Carolina Press, 2004), received numerous honors including the T.R. Fehrenbach Book Award and being ranked a top ten nonfiction book by Essence Magazine. Shabazz has also published The Forty Acres Documents, a sourcebook on reparations, along with journal articles, book chapters, reviews and writings in publications as diverse as The Source Magazine of Hip-Hop Music, Culture & Politics. His newest book co-edited with Celia R. Daileader and Rhoda E. Johnson, is Women & Others: Perspective on Race, Gender, and Empire (Palgrave Macmillan Press, 2007). An international scholar, he was named a Fulbright Senior Specialist and has done work in Brazil, Ghana, Japan, Cuba, Mali, France, Nicaragua, and Jamaica. In recognition of his work as a teacher, in 2001, The University of Alabama National Alumni Association awarded him its coveted Outstanding Commitment to Teaching Award. He presently completing an historical biography of an African American newspaper publisher and human rights activist entitled Carter Wesley: Master of the Blast.

Educational development and historic preservation are major parts of his professional and volunteer service work. He has served as chair of the Board of Directors for the Coalition of Alabamians Reforming Education and, in 2004, was appointed by Gov. Bob Riley to the Brown v. Board of Education 50th Anniversary Commission. He was also the District 7 Representative on the Black Heritage Council of the Alabama Historical Commission and served on the Alabama state review panel for the National Register of Historic Places. He counts as one of his proudest accomplishments his work with the Safe House Historic Museum in Greensboro, of which he is the founding executive director.

For a biographical essay, see “Amilcar Shabazz: The Heart of the African-American Experience,” Cardinal Cadence March-May 2004 (vol. 322), pp. 36-38. Available online as a PDF file at:

My teaching philosophy, an ever-evolving work in progress, is a product of my teaching life in higher education that began in 1985 at Pratt Institute in New York City. In my role as Project Coordinator for the Pratt Institute Chapter of the New York Public Interest Research Group it was my privilege to develop student leaders and to teach them the skills needed to work on issues ranging from higher education funding to environmental protection, from social justice to consumer rights. In the process of helping them transform their reality I had an epiphany that led me to transform mine as I decided to become a university teacher. Besides teaching at universities where I work as a professor, I often give lectures at other schools and community events. The section entitled “Selected Public Work and Invited Lectures since 1991,” at the end of this Vita lists some of the many places where I have shared my expertise. Also, see the links below for my approach to the craft of teaching (one is a Word document and the other is a media file):

American History to 1877 & Since 1877 (Honors)
Ethnic Minorities in U.S. History

The Struggle for Equality in the U.S.

Historical Research Methods and Theory

Inside Invisible Houston [Texas]

Web-CT-based joint course on global cultures and cultural fluency project between the University of Alabama and the United Arab Emirates University in Al-Ain, UAE; Faculdades COC Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. The project featured streaming video of classroom instruction and interactive interviews via live chat. It was an outgrowth of a U.S. State Department Bureau of Public Diplomacy initiative.

“Mapping the 3rd Ward in Houston: Story Work in the Face of Redevelopment.” In 2006, I began collaborating with Carroll Parrott Blue’s The Dawn Project, the University of Houston’s College of Education, and the Center for Digital Storytelling (CDS) of Berkeley, California. The project is creating a StoryMap for the Third Ward of Houston, Texas, akin to a prototype CDS helped create (www.storycenter.org/placemeant.html). The map locates multimedia stories in the form of short memoirs that combine creative writing, the family album, digital audio and video editing on an online map. It integrates Digital Storytelling with an emergent tool set of digital mapping technologies now available to the public: geo-tagged images on Flickr, story-based GoogleMaps, Windows Live virtual tours, and walking tours via local cell phone, Bluetooth, and other imbedded wireless stories. From the December 9-12, 2006, workshop, my StoryMap-in-progress, “Luddington’s Café,” is online at http://www.storycenter.org/thirdward.html

“Jackson v. McDonald: The Story of Versie Lee Jackson & the Integration of Lamar University” (2007), The Barbara Jordan Historical Essay Competition Video—The African American in Texas: Past & Present by UTOPIA, a collaboration of the University of Texas Libraries. The UTOPIA team is composed of content librarians, graphic designers, Web site builders, writers, programmers, information architects, videographers and more—all working together to break down the physical boundaries between the University and the world. I was a volunteer historical consultant to and talking head in this 20-minute documentary. A QuickTime draft is online at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/dlp/utopia/barbarajordan/barbara.jordan-finecut.mov

Created and co-facilitated with Tera Hunter: “Oppositional Culture and Class Struggle” University of Houston Black History Workshop, March 20-22, 2003; Houston, TX.

Alabama State University and the Institute of Language and Culture project entitled Theatre Arts Program Audience Talk-Back Series for Streamers, The Wiz, and For Colored Girls funded by the Alabama Humanities Commission, Montgomery; January-May 1998.

The Wye Faculty Seminar, 2001. “Citizenship & the American Polity.” The Aspen Institute.

HB 3418, authored by Rep. Irma Rangel: Testimony before the Texas State Legislature’s House Committee on Higher Education on the consideration of race, ethnicity, or national origin in actions and decisions of public institutions of higher education; April 8, 1997, Austin, TX.

Listed in Who’s Who inAmerica, 58th edition (Marquis, 2004) and in the Directory of American Scholars, 10th edition (Gale Group, 2001).

“What Ron Said,” a documentary examining racism in Britain via Ron Atkinson’s learning about race issues from a range of people from Darcus Howe to me and my University of Alabama students. “Big Ron” was forced to resign as an ITV football pundit in April 2004, after he called footballer Marcel Desailly a “fucking lazy thick nigger” in what he thought were off-air remarks. Independent producer Petal Felix working for the Welsh indy Aspect Television made the program. It aired on BBC1, 13 December 2004.

African American Studies (AAS) Program faculty committee; AAS Program Book Club organizer; Provost Search Committee; faculty advisor to the University of Houston Under/graduate Research Union, Weusi Kwa Elimu (Blacks in Education), the African American Communications Team; College Grievance Committee

“From Dr. King to Sambo Mockbee: Lessons in the Struggle to Build Freedom & Dignity in the Alabama Black Belt.” Auburn University Rural Studio Colloquium, New Bern, AL.

“Law Written in Blood: Trying to Vote in Hale County in the 1960s.” Alabama Department of Archives and History ArchiTreats Program, Montgomery, AL.
“From Segregation to Hopwood: American Democracy through the Looking Glass of Texas Higher Education.” The James Taylor Lecture Series of the Southwest Texas State University Department of History, San Marcos, TX.
“Old Schools in a New Century: The African American Legacy.” The Alabama Historical Commission Annual Preservation Conference, Montgomery, AL.

“Juneteenth: Origins and Significance.” The Texas Emancipation Juneteenth Historical Commission’s History Symposium at the State Capitol; Austin, TX.

“Engaging Dr. Cornel West’s Restoring Hope/Conversations on the Future of Black America.” The President’s Colloquium Series and Stillman College Annual African American Heritage Book Review; Tuscaloosa, AL.